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Comment by azhenley | Hacker News Reader

Yes, they have an Intel emulator (Rosetta I think they called it) and are pushing developers to produce "universal apps".

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Rosetta 2 is the newest version. The universal apps are just an export in XCode from what the presentation made it seem like. Developers exclaiming it took 10 minutes to do the universal app build.

Universal apps have existed since the transition from PowerPC. For most apps it's simply recompiling in Xcode and it creates a fat binary with both architectures.

Any apps that rely on specific intel libraries will have a bit more work to do.

Ah that distinction was not made in the presentation. Thanks for this.

Here’s more details on Rosetta: https://www.theverge.com/21304182/apple-arm-mac-rosetta-2-em...

It actually depends on the app and what it’s doing. For example they said photoshop wouldn’t be available on it until early 2021.

They said Photoshop won't be available as a universal binary until 2021. It wasn't clear if it would run on Rosetta 2 in the meantime.

"Universal apps" that only run on OSX and Apple's mobile OS I presume?

Universal apps run on both Apple Silicon (ARM) processors and Intel processor-based Macs.

Oh, so if I run Windows/Linux on the Intel based Mac I can run these Universal apps? Sounds very un-Apple-like if true.

If not true, then my original comment seems to still stand.

No, "Universal" apps in this context means these apps can run in Mac OS, either on an Intel Mac or on an Apple Silicon (ARM) Mac. Nothing at all to do with iOS, iPadOS, Windows or Linux.

Isn't that misleading marketing? I know that companies can call their new efforts whatever they want, but if someone sells a "Universal keyboard" that only works with Windows, isn't that just straight up misleading marketing?

The only thing that comes close to being "universal apps" would be applications that run in a browser.

An M1-based Mac will run:

* Universal apps (also known as "fat binaries") that run natively on Intel and M1 Macs

* ARM-native Mac apps

* Intel-based Mac apps via Rosetta 2

* iOS/iPadOS apps (developer’s choice)

* Unix/BSD command line apps (Vim, tmux, bash, zsh, etc.)

* Linux via’s built-in hypervisor

* Java

* Electron apps (VS Code, Slack, etc.)

* Windows via virtualization

* Web apps (Service Workers, WASM, push notifications, etc.) on Safari, Chrome, etc.

Safari is already a universal app; I'm sure Chrome, Firefox, etc. will follow shortly.

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